Second Party System

The Second Party System was a period of American history which lasted from 1828 to 1854, during which the major parties competing for political power were the Whigs (National Republicans until 1835) and the Jacksonian Democrats. The era began immediately after the collapse of the First Party System with the disintegration of the Democratic-Republican Party in 1828, and it continued until the downfall of the Whigs in 1854 and the rise of the Republican Party and the Third Party System. The Second Party System was marked by contention over modernization, industrialization, immigration, the power of the federal government, the role of special interest groups in politics, the National Bank, and, later, over slavery. The two main parties were: The Jacksonians held the presidency from 1829 to 1841 and from 1845 to 1849, with Jackson himself serving as President from 1829 to 1837 and his vice-president Martin Van Buren serving from 1837 to 1841. Jackson successfully destroyed the Second Bank of the United States in the "Bank War" and attempted to affirm the predominance of the executive branch, notably challenging the US Supreme Court by quipping, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it." While Jackson was generally in favor of states' rights, he took exception to South Carolina's nullification of the federal "Tariff of Abominations", forcing South Carolina to back down after threatening to send in the military in the "Nullification Crisis" of 1833. Jackson also oversaw the Trail of Tears, the mass deportation of Native Americans living to the east of the Mississippi River to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma; this was done in order to vacate native lands for unopposed white settlement. Jackson left office in 1837, and his vice-president Van Buren was forced to deal with the Panic of 1837, the result of Jackson's anti-bank and anti-paper money policies; nicknamed "Van Ruin", he lost re-election to Whig candidate William Henry Harrison in 1840. Harrison died a month into his term in April 1841, and his vice-president John Tyler, a former Democrat, refused to adopt his party's tariff and national bank proposals, leading to his cabinet's resignation and his nickname "His Accidency". He endorsed Democrat James K. Polk in the 1844 presidential election, in which Polk defeated Whig candidate Henry Clay. Under Polk, the Democratic government annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845 and conquered the rest of Texas and the entirety of the American West from Mexico in the ensuing Mexican-American War of 1846-48. The war's end in 1848, in addition to the previous United States v. The Amistad case, resulted in the shift in national focus towards the growing slavery debate as the Democrats and Whigs argued over whether to extend slavery into the "Mexican Cession" territories. The Whigs were deeply divided over the issue, with the northern Conscience Whigs supporting anti-extensionism and the southern Cotton Whigs supporting popular sovereignty and the right of the people to decide the legality of slavery in the new territories. As a result of the Whig Party's internal divisions, the abolitionist Free Soil Party emerged with the goal of abolishing slavery and the nativist Know Nothings emerged to oppose Catholic immigration and to focus on preserving the union. The death of the Whig Party in 1854 and its replacement by the Republican Party - a coalition of Free Soilers, northern Know Nothings, and anti-slavery former Whigs and Democrats - and the Democratic Party's new focus on defending states' rights and slavery led to the advent of the Third Party System and the start of the American Civil War in 1861.
 * Conservative dot.png The Democrats were a populist and conservative political party founded in 1828 by supporters of Jacksonian democracy, a political movement led by the popular war hero and former Democratic-Republican presidential candidate Andrew Jackson. The Democrats were strongest along the frontier and in rural America, as well as among Catholic immigrants (mostly Irish and German) and poor urban laborers. The Democrats generally favored the Jeffersonian ideals of limited government, individualism, and opposition to banking and the business elite, and they opposed the reform movement (which promoted a stronger central government) and opposed the advent of public education due to the loss of parental responsibility and their undermining of religious freedom due to their secular nature. While Jacksonian Democrats were liberal/populist in their support for univeral manhood suffrage for whites (through the removal of property requirements for voting) and in their tolerance of Catholic immigrant laborers, they were socially conservative due to their support for the traditional agrarian lifestyle and their resistance to modernization, their support for expansion south and west to make room for more farmlands, and their lack of concern for humanitarianism (notably exemplified in the Trail of Tears and the Southern Democrats' support for the extension of slavery). The Democrats were fiscally conservative in that they were staunchly pro-free trade and anti-tariffs.
 * Liberal dot.png The Whigs were a liberal-conservative and pro-business liberal political party founded in 1835 as the amalgamation of the anti-Jacksonian National Republican Party and the Anti-Masonic Party. Led by John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, the Whigs were the spiritual successors of the Federalists, as they also supported a strong central democracy. The new party was supported by economic modernizers, bankers, businessmen, commercial farmers, evangelical Protestants, Scots-Irish and English immigrants, and Southern planters opposed to Jackson's handling of the Nullification Crisis, and it took its names from the British Whigs due to their shared goal of supporting the supremacy of elected representatives over the head of state. The Whigs favored economic expansion through an interventionist state, supported a national bank and paper currency, supported moralistic humanitarian reforms (such as public schools, the abolition of capital punishment, prison and asylum reforms, and temperance) due to the influence of the Second Great Awakening (which also resulted in their staunch opposition to Catholic immigration), supported the chartering of corporations, and supported a high tariff on imported goods to stimulate the creation of new factories. The Whigs held progressive views when it came to the reform movement, held classical liberal economic views, held traditionalist conservative views on support for a strong central government, supported the Whiggish ideal of support for the supremacy of the US Congress over the presidency, and held moralistic views when it came to opposing Catholic immigration and support for Protestantism as the dominant faith.